Tag Archives: Quebec

Junk food banned from Gatineau hockey arenas; what’s next, a ban on fighting?

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As a kid, my pre-game hockey ritual was to buy a Jersey Milk chocolate bar at the arena before going into the dressing room to get ready. I didn’t really know about sugar and caffeine, but it seemed to wake me up before the game. In drastic situations, a Dairy Milk would suffice.

So I was horrified to read that hockey arenas in Gatineau, Quebec, will no longer be allowed to stock pop, chips, chocolate bars or poutine (actually, I don’t care about the poutine; it’s gross).

The city of 242,000 has voted to cut junk food from hockey arena food stands within three years in an attempt by to reduce the trans fats in the diet of the Gatineau hockey fan.

Canteens will replace the snacks with spaghetti, sandwiches, muffins and sports drinks, but not pop.

Can I get some red wine to go with the spaghetti as I’m strolling into the dressing room? In Quebec, the answer is probably yes.

Top 5 American counterfeit foods

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Elizabeth Weise of USA Today writes that foods masquerading as something else — a more nutritious something else — have been big news in the past two years.

Chinese food companies in particular have been blamed for making deadly alterations to dairy, baby and pet foods by adding melamine. The chemical makes it appear that the food or beverage has the required level of protein.

But what about food producers in this country? What fraudulent foods do U.S. consumers have to fear from American companies?

Seafood
Fish is the most frequently faked food Americans buy. In the business, it’s called "species adulteration" — selling a cheaper fish such as pen-raised Atlantic salmon as wild Alaska salmon.

Olive oil
This luxury oil, touted for its heart-health properties and taste, has become a gourmet must-have. Americans consumed about 575 million pounds of the silky stuff last year, according to the North American Olive Oil Association. Sixty-three percent was the higher-grade extra virgin, which comes from the first pressing of the olives. It’s also one of the most frequently counterfeited food products, says Martin Stutsman, the FDA’s consumer safety officer for edible oils.

Honey
An expensive natural product that’s mostly sugar, honey is easily faked. "If you can substitute a less expensive source of sugar for the expensive one, you can save some money and gain market share," says the FDA’s Stutsman.

Vanilla
A product of the tropics, vanilla pods can be soaked in milk or stored in sugar to impart a delicate vanilla scent to foods. More commonly, they’re soaked in alcohol that is then used as a flavoring.

Maple syrup
Maple syrup is another high-value item that can be adulterated. In these tough economic times, Vermont, the USA’s largest supplier to flapjacks everywhere, may up its testing programs.

But Quebec is the world’s largest producer of maple syrup. And I am not from Quebec.
 

Quebec cheese linked to two deaths, one miscarriage, 120 illnesses — gets government bailout

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I was a fan of Quebec agriculture minister Laurent Lessard.

After two separate outbreaks  — one listeria, one salmonella – in Quebec-made cheese that killed two, caused one miscarriage, sickened six other pregnant women and their newborn babies, and sickened a total of about 120 people, Lessard ordered a crackdown.

When asked about compensation for cheese retailers who had to discard potentially contaminated product, Lessard said on Sept. 17,

"The province is not there to compensate. We aren’t an insurance company."

Retailers have a responsibility to market safe products, and if there’s a risk associated to what they’re selling they have to absorb the losses, he said.

But being astute about Quebec politics and the role of dairy producers, Lessard didn’t rule out possible compensation for cheese producers, even though provincial food inspectors found traces listeria in 16 different establishments, either on cheese or processing equipment.

Three weeks later, and it appears that politics has caught up with the public health overtures of Monsieur Lessard as he announced Friday that Quebec’s small cheese producers and retailers will receive a three-year, $8.4-million provincial aid package, along with $11.3-million in interest-free loans.

"I want to reassure Quebec consumers. All of Quebec’s cheese producers are presently offering safe and secure products.”

Approximately half of the aid package will be spent on improving quality control. Government inspections will be conducted monthly, the minister said, and retailers will receive guidelines on improving the handling of cheeses.

Producers and retailers reported a significant drop in sales of Quebec cheeses, which last year alone totaled $2.6-billion.

Where’s the compensation for the sick people? Where’s the effort to accurately present the risks of soft cheeses (oh, and deli meats) to certain populations, like pregnant women and the elderly.

I’m not such a fan anymore.

Pregnant woman miscarries because of listeria in Quebec cheese

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Public health officials in Quebec say a pregnant woman in the province has lost her baby, possibly because of listeriosis.

Officials are still awaiting test results to confirm whether the woman who lost her baby was infected with the bacteria, said Dr. Horatio Arruda, Quebec’s director of public health protection.

She didn’t lose the baby. It’s not like she misplaced the baby somewhere. The baby died because of listeria. Pregnant women should not eat a whole bunch of refrigerated ready-to-eat foods, but in the rush to promote raw milk cheese and food porn, those in charge forgot to remind those who are vulnerable of the risks.

Max Dubois, the owner of L’Échoppe des Fromages in St. Lambert, wants to know who will compensate him for the $40,000 worth of cheese inspectors seized and destroyed from his store on Saturday.

"Why could they not have organized a voluntary recall, as they do in France. Each cheese would have been sent away for analysis. We would have better been able to trace the spread of the bacteria. But now all the evidence has been destroyed. We’ll never know if it was spread through a distributor, or on the paper it was wrapped in, or in some other way."

Uh, France is no better. Here is the latest French cheese recall due to listeria.

Microbiologist Jacques Goulet, a cheese specialist in the food science department at Université Laval, says he, too, believes the government over-reacted.

"Listeria is present everywhere. But for most people, the risk posed by listeriosis is very low. Healthy people are rarely affected by the bacteria," he said, noting that the annual average of listeriosis cases in Quebec is about 50. (The public health department reported 63 cases in 2007 and 49 in 2006.).

Way to cite statistics. The people who got sick are real people who thought they were eating safe food.
 

Seven pregnant women among 14 sickened with listeria from Quebec cheese

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In 2004, I spent a week at a cottage with a couple of my children in Eastern Ontario near Sandbanks Provincial Park on Lake Ontario. Lovely spot.

One rainy day, we toured around and ended up at a cheese shop. They produced the cheese in the factory at the back, and had a charming market outlet that seemed to trap tourists like bees on sap.

Upon entering the store, a sign declared, “HACCP – A food safety program; Hazard Analysis Critical Control Pont.” Cool. I asked one of the staff what it meant. She said she didn’t know.

But beside the HACCP proclamation was a sign that read, “Public bathroom is out of order; for your convenience there is a blue Johnny on the spot behind the building (sic).”

And here it is (left). Note the lack of handwashing facilities or sanitizer. I watched people go to the porta potty and then come into the cheese shop and do what people do at quaint cheese shops: stick their unwashed hands into shared samples of curds (that’s one of my daughters looking disgusted in the middle, right, not because of the practice, but because I have to take pictures and be a food safety geek everywhere we go).

HACCP really doesn’t mean much unless there is a culture of food safety amongst the employees and everyone involved in making a product, like cheese or deli meat.

Best as I can figure, there is a separate outbreak of listeria in Quebec, in which one has died and 14 have been sickened. Eleven different types of cheese have been recalled, and many of them appear to be raw milk cheese, which the Quebec government recently approved for sale.

While merchants are complaining about the crackdown and lost sales, what seems to have been lost in the coverage is that seven pregnant women – four confirmed, three suspected – have developed listeriosis and three gave birth prematurely.

Sylvie Thibault, a customer sampling some of the free cheeses at La Fromagerie Atwater yesterday, said she’s not worried, stating,
 
"I have started to double-check what cheese I buy. But I won’t stop eating the food I love because of a little scare."

Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, said,
 
"We need to put this in perspective," adding it’s important "not to have people think every time they bite into a piece of brie, they’re risking death."

Wow. I wouldn’t want to be pregnant in Quebec. So, Quebec government (Canada has no real authority in Quebec), given the number of pregnant women who have been sickened, any efforts to highlight the risks of listeria in certain foods to at-risk populations? Or is it just a silly little scare?

The recalled products from Fromagerie Medard are: Le Rang des Iles, Le 14 Arpents, Les Petits Vieux, Le Gedeon, Le Medard, Le Couventine, Le Cabrouet and Les Cailles, all with best-before dates between July 12 and Sept. 6. Products pulled off shelves from Fromagerie Table Ronde are: Le Fleurdelyse, Le Fou de Roi and Le Rassembleu with best-before dates after July 14.

Last week, cheeses manufactured by Fromages La Chaudiere were recalled because of salmonella, blamed for the death of an elderly person in the Chaudiere Appalaches region and 90 illnesses across Quebec.
 

Quebec says yes to raw milk cheese – and it’s recalled for listeria

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On the same day that Quebec moved to permit raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Portuguese Cheese Co. warned the public not to consume Santa Maria brand Queijo de Cabra (fresh goat cheese) because it may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

Does fresh mean raw? How’s a pregnant woman – or a guy who really doesn’t like to barf — to know?

No matter, the Montreal Gazette came out Saturday and exclaimed in an editorial that “the trick is to manage the risks carefully, and make sure potential consumers understand the situation. Quebec seems to have taken health concerns into account. Under the new rules, Quebec will require each cheesemaker to know his or her milk supplier personally, and to be knowledgeable about the dairy operation in question.”

Yes I know you. Therefore it is safe.

Mansel Griffiths, a dairy microbiologist at the University of Guelph and my PhD supervisor (right, not exactly as shown) says the 60-day limit has become arbitrary, since it is no longer a guarantee of destroying pathogens. Still, he believes raw-milk cheese continues to pose health-safety issues over potential pathogens.

Mimzy and me and Amy

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Last year it was five weeks touring France; this year, Amy’s studying business French in Quebec and Ontario (Canada) and I’m tagging along.

We left Manhattan and our dogs on May 21, but picked up another for the 18 hour drive: a borzoi, or Russian wolf hound, named Mimzy who a friend in Guelph, Ontario, had purchased from its current owner in Manhattan (Kansas).

That’s Mimzy and me (right). She made the trip, uh, interesting (and should come standard-issue with a drool bucket).

After games of golf, hockey, a committee meeting with Chapman and meals with kids, friends and parents, it was off to Montreal. We’re staying in the Latin Quarter, and today wondered through the Notre-Dame Basilica.

This is the bathroom (right) in the Basilica, and like every other public washroom I’ve visited in Quebec, there was no paper towel. Proper handwashing requires the proper tools, and that includes paper towels.

And because this song was played during the beginning of tonight’s game 2 of the Detroit-Pittsburgh Stanley Cup finals, here is Stompin’ Tom Connors with, The Hockey Song.

Raw milk goat cheese leads to listeria

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The Quebec ministry of agriculture is warning people not to eat raw milk goat cheese from La Ferme écologique coop d’Ulverton located on Route 143 in Ulverton after a case of Listeria monocytogenes food poisoning was reported in the Montreal area.

Laboratory tests on the raw milk cheese from the Ulverton coop revealed the presence of listeria.

The ministry said the dairy coop does not have the required permit to make cheese destined for consumers and that people should not eat cheese from producers who are not licensed. Only raw milk cheese produced in licensed factories can be consumed safely.

As Amy noted in June, some of the major French producers have switched to using heated milk to reduce the risk of disease. Lactilis’ spokesperson, Luc Morelon said that although they recognize the importance of Camembert traditions, they’re making the change,

 “[b]ecause consumer safety is paramount, and we cannot guarantee it 100 per cent. We cannot accept the risk of seeing our historic brands disappearing because of an accident in production." In response to his critics Morelon added, “I don’t want to risk sending any more children to hospital. It’s as simple as that."